Quick Study: Turner Prize, Miami, Zwirner, and, yes, surfing

In line with recent custom, the one painter shortlisted for the Turner Prize–Lynette Yiadom-Boakye–was passed over. Via NYTimes: “The artist Laure Prouvost, whose works combine whimsical objects and drawings in evocative settings with an Instagram-like stream of film images, has won this year’s Turner Prize, the prestigious and often contentious annual award for a British artist under 50.” Image above: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, The Generosity, 2010.

—————————————-

Two Coats of Paint has roped painter-blogger Mary Addison Hackett into serving as our Miami correspondent this year. A painter currently working out of Nashville, Hackett (press pass picture on right) has blogged about her painting practice at Process since 2005. If you see her wandering around, say hello and invite her to a party. Follow her on Twitter @maryaddhackett.

The New Yorker published a profile of dealer David Zwirner last week. Basically, the article confirms that it takes a lot of money to run an A-list gallery and that learning to surf could be a good career move. In the last paragraph, when writer Nick Paumgarten visits Zwirner at his summer house in Montauk, the dealer laments the changes taking place in the East End fishing community:

On our way to buy a striped bass for lunch, [Zwirner] pulled into a lot at the beach to get a look at the surf, and ran into another gallery owner who’d just finished surfing, and whom he talked about afterward as a member of a clique of cool art people and surfers whom he doesn’t really hang out with in Montauk. He has the air of a family man who is resigned to being a square—let ’em laugh. He complained about hipsters taking over the town and took me to Gosman’s, a fish market, where a fleet of commercial trawlers were docked. “This is real, and that’s what’s good about Montauk,” he said. He had a romantic attraction to the rusting, gear-strewn vessels and to the idea, at least, of good hard labor at sea—and he rued the trawlers’ eventual obsolescence. “You just know we’ll all be eating farm fish soon,” he said. He went inside and stood in line to buy a wild striper.

Paumgarten seems to be highlighting Zwirner’s obtuseness. He rues the decline of the working-class fisherman in Montauk, yet stokes an analogous dynamic in the art world, where the top galleries and auction houses suck up most of the money and leave mid-level galleries (and artists) struggling to survive.

—————————————-

In Harper’s Ben Lerner writes a thoughtful piece about what art is worth, with an emphasis on art vandalism and how it affects market value. It’s behind a paywall, but worth a read.

Despite the art world’s record breaking prices and the prevailing,
monstrous bloat, we’re confident that there is great reward in the
jubilant straightforwardness of the 8 artists presented. Bradford,
Hauser, Miler, Mrozowski and Petras live and work in Brooklyn. Minov
was in residence in Manhattan at LMCC’s Worskpace 2013 program and was
born and continues to work in Sofia, Bulgaria. Matt Stokes is
represented by ZieherSmith and lives and works in Blaydon on Tyne,
England. Crawford remains a mystery.

Two Coats of Paint is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To use content beyond the scope of this license, permission is required.

Connect With Us

Karen Pence is a painter
Yes, Indiana's First Lady Karen Pence likes to paint. Pence told the Indy Star that she studied art at Butler, where she majored in teaching and minored in art. "I ...

Two Coats Selected Gallery Guide / March 2018
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In case readers want to check out some painting shows but aren’t interested in racing around to the art fairs (or paying the entry fees), here are some gallery shows ...

Images: The Independent Art Fair, 2018
This year the Independent Art Fair showed a slew of conventionally good paintings, which is not necessarily de rigueur for the enterprise that prides itself on being the most “edgy” and “risk-taking” of the New ...

Quick study
This edition of “Quick study” includes good news about how the arts drive economic growth and bad news about MoCA curator Helen Molesworth. Also: Grant Wood’s retrospective at the Whitney, Russian collectors' hankering to join in the ...

The Casualist tendency
This essay, which builds upon an essay about contemporary abstract painting that I wrote for The Brooklyn Rail in 2011, was just published in the January/February 2014 issue of Christie's ...

These threads are queer“Let the threads be articulate.” – Anni Albers
Guest Contributor Clarity Haynes / The wall text at the portal to the exhibition "Queer Threads," currently at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in ...

Report from Berlin: Judith Hopf’s idiosyncratic vision
Contributed by Loren Britton / Berlin-based artist Judith Hopf, known for idiosyncratic combinations, is invested in post-painting practices coming out of Fluxus conversations between George Brecht and Allan Kaprow. In her sculpture show ...

Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam: About a painting
Brad Killam and his wife, artist-writer-educator-curator Michelle Grabner, transcribed the following conversation they had about Airport (2015), one of the terrific small-scale paintings that is included in Killam’s solo at Geary Contemporary. The exhibition, on view through March 17 ...

Subscribe VIA Email

Sharing content

Two Coats of Paint is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial - No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Contact Sharon Butler via email for permission to use content beyond the scope of this license.